Automotive recyclers such as salvage yards acquire used automotive parts, such as powertrain, chassis, and body parts of automobiles. Many of the mechanical parts from these vehicles are referred to in the salvage industry as “cores.” Cores are typically extracted from automobiles that were purchased by the recyclers for the purpose of disassembling them to sell the cores. In other instances, cores may be acquired from manufacturers of the parts themselves, where a defect has been found in the manufactured part so that the part cannot be used unless remanufactured.
The automotive recyclers sell the extracted cores from automobiles to core suppliers that gather large quantities of a particular core for a particular vehicle. Core suppliers identify the purchased cores and then verify that the cores can be remanufactured or otherwise reconditioned. These gathered quantities of cores for a particular vehicle are then sold to remanufacturers who recondition these parts. For remanufacturers, receiving good, rebuildable cores in large quantities is important since remanufacturing of the cores often requires tooling and machining lines that must be set up for a particular core. Thus, remanufacturers typically prefer to purchase cores from core suppliers in bulk rather than from automotive recyclers one piece at a time.
The remanufacturers recondition or remanufacture these cores and then sell these remanufactured/reconditioned parts to wholesale or retail automotive part suppliers. Because these cores are reconditioned rather than being entirely manufactured, the remanufactured parts can be sold for less than the corresponding new parts.
Automotive recyclers use a standard parts identification system referred to as an interchange, such as the Hollander interchange, for example, to help identify parts from vehicles. Such interchange systems allow an automotive recycler to identify the make, model, and year range of most parts on a given vehicle, and to identify the parts using a proprietary alphanumeric identification system. In contrast, core suppliers and remanufacturers may utilize different identification numbers than the automotive recyclers. For example, core suppliers and remanufacturers may use Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) numbers, casting numbers, and remanufacturer-specific proprietary stock keeping unit (SKU) numbers. These numbers are very specific and do not have the same year make model breakdown availability that salvage industry interchanges have. The core supplier numbers are very specific whereas the salvage industry interchange numbers are very broad and may encompass many different numbers.
Efforts to date to improve the ability to cross reference core supplier numbers to salvage industry interchange numbers have been largely unsuccessful in providing a cost-effective manner of identifying specific cores sought by core suppliers. Additionally, core suppliers have not been able to satisfactorily characterize salvage yard inventories. Efforts aimed at improving the ability of the parties to accurately identify and supply the required parts have been extremely labor-intense and have not provided a satisfactory return on the amount of resources expended. What is needed is a system and a method for quickly and accurately determining salvage yard inventories and determining the value of a particular part from a particular automobile.